almost there...

ok, so we've been working a little bit and we've come up with what we're actually doing, or at least that's what it looks like.
our final product isn't actually helical, but it looks like it, kind of, and it works just as well for what we're doing, and it's easier to make.
we're going to use chicken wire as our skeleton, then cover it in either plastic wrap or aluminum foil or something like that.
we will use a lamppost as our vertical pole which will attach to the flesh of the turbine and the gear at the bottom.
we will be using part of a bike frame with a gear on it as the base, then gearing this to another gear which will be attached to a motor which has not yet been chosen.
we will either attach directly from the bike frame to richard's pole or we will attach to a piece of wood in between. we will probably go directly.
and we need to get moving. the next time we'll all be together will be thursday, the day before this needs to work.

final design?

i emailed some info to my group this morning, but i don't know if they got it
first of all, sorry for not emailing anything earlier, like i said i would
i've been having a nice vacation and procrastinating bigtime
however, i did a lot of thinking last night, aided by my uncle, who will supply some materials

now, everything i am saying here is my idea, and has not been communicated to the team at all yet. please respond with your thoughts

so, here's the design: it's hard to visualize, so i made a model, which i took pictures of and labeled what the counterpart in the final design will be. What the design will have for materials:

base: a piece of pipe for mounting to richard's pipe ( i have this )
platform: plywood ( i have this )
base for turbine: bicycle wheel ( i will have one of these by noon saturday )
gear to attach to central pole: from bicycle ( i will have one of these by noon saturday )
gear to attach to motor: from bicycle ( i will have many of these by noon saturday )
chain to attach gears: from bicycle ( i will have this by noon saturday )
central pole: either thick wooden dowel or hollow pvc tube ( i don't have this but it's easy to get )
skeleton for helix: coathangers ( i will have a huge number of these saturday )
"flesh" of helix: plastic wrap or aluminum foil ( i have some, you have some, more is available )
attachment: assorted nuts, bolts, maybe welding, and glue ( i have most or all of this )

here's pictures, the labels are too small too read in the post, but if you click the picture you can read them. :)

It does work

Interesting fact: we discovered that our first model works too - horizontally! If we place the axis perpendicular to the wind, the turbine works very well. It would need a tail if we actually decided to make one, but still - it spins pretty well that way.

It makes power!!!

The concept has been proved finally! Using a two peaces of plastic cylinders, cut diagonally, we made a pretty good little model of a wind turbine that works with wind coming from any direction possible. This is just what we need! The 2:1, 45 curvature of the pieces and absence of air space in between parts of the blade makes the model work a lot better:

For the real turbine we are probably going to use this shape, and for the material culvur pipe (not sure how to spell that), which would the same as the plastic cylinder we used.
On friday we also saw our little turbine actually making power! It was very exciting! A little tiny motor attached to our axis was able to make about 160 mW, which is not so bad for a model.
And, by the way, we also tested it outside, and it worked even at the slightest wind.

Physics and math

Here's a very good website that has a lot of information on the physics and math part of the project:

http://www.educypedia.be/education/windturbines.htm

An important thing in building a wind turbine is aerodynamic drag. There is a whole bunch of other terms to be used by engineers, but the main idea is that the work of our turbine would depend on:
capture area of the wind;
wind speed;
of course, shape of the blades;
efficiency of the generator;
roughness of the surface;
the drag coefficient;
Reynolds number (viscosity of the air and density of the air).

To calculate the efficiency, power product, etc. we can just use the ready formulas.
We just need to make sure that our turbine is strong enough not to break under pressure of strong winds, and not too heavy for the low winds.

Proof of concept

Here are some pictures of us trying to "prove the concept". The main idea kind of worked, but what we decided on is that there's too much space in between the pieces of our model, and also it is too curved. We need to take a more careful look at the original helix wind turbine, because it is not as twisted as ours, which could be the reason. We also found out that our turbine would work if we had a wall, but that is exactly what we are trying not to do, so we are making another "proof of concept" now, just to see if it will actually work. Another thing is, we will use completely different materials for the actual turbine, which would change the situation too.
Right now, in terms of transferring the "concept" from our model onto the turbine, we are thinking about how we want to connect the main peaces (the rotating parts, the generator, the tower, the spinning parts), and what materials we are going to use for them.

More pictures:

Initial materials

Just so that we always have this stuff in front of our eyes, I'm posting all the stuff that we are initially given by Richard.
1) Budget: $20.00.
2) Tower: 3.00 m vertical 1-1/4” steel threaded pole.
3) Two 4.00 m leads of #18 gauge shielded copper wire.
4) Size: must fit inside a cube 1.30*1.30 m.

And here are the important dates:

Tuesday, April 21, 2008 small 24” pre-prototype well into process or operating
Work on it over vacation…
Completion date: Thusday, May 1^st SBS
Test Date: Earth Day May 2^nd = 24 hour Test Day.

Helix vertical wind turbine

All right, so we started with researching various wind turbines, their structures and qualities, and picked one type that we thought would suit our conditions and we liked the most. We found many interesting ones, but we decided to stop at the helix vertical axis wind turbine. Looks like this:

We like it because:
- It has maximum surface area, which allows to get more energy out of wind power;
- It can be installed on lower heights;
- It moves silently;
- It's safe for birds because of its shape;
- We just like the way it looks :).
So we almost finished our model of the turbine. The materials are probably going to be entirely different for the real turbine, but we're going to make sure that the basic concept is right.
What about everyone's part in the project we decided that every member will do some research on wind turbines. Ernest is going to research engines and generators. Nick is going to think of materials that we could use for building the turbine. He also promised to find parts for the generator. Don and Desi are going to work on the structure of the turbine. Don is good at scheming and he has a good 3d vision on paper, so they are going to research the essential parts of the turbine, connections between them and all the technical part of it. And Zhanar is going to work on theory, formulas, numbers, calculations, proportions, etc. We should never forget about math! :) By the way when somebody finds something on somebody else's part, they'll just post it here, and we'll all take a look at it. That's pretty much what we have for now.

Wind Turbine Project Blog

Here we go. The project has started.